But Jews should be joining Catholics on this one. If McCain were as pro-Israel as Hagee says he is, the candidate would want nothing to do with Hagee. You don’t back a democracy by siding with someone who regards a handgun as the means to change policy. There is a certain dissonance between supporting a country and giving theological justifications for the murder of its elected leader. We don’t even have to talk about Hagee’s earnest hopes for war on Israeli soil, or his classic theological delegitimization of Judaism.

I completely agree, but of course it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be in the cards. It was about a year ago today that I found myself wondering why AIPAC was putting Hagee on a panel described as “Two eloquent voices from diverse backgrounds explore the history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East and how Americans from all faiths can find common cause in supporting Israel.” It’s certainly true that Hagee’s group, Christians United for Israel, shows that Americans can support Israel for all sorts of reasons, ranging from concern for the welfare of the Jewish people to a desire to see Israel conquered by a Russo-Arab alliance in order to hasten the End Times, but sometimes the whole “big tent” concept can go too far.

Presumably what’s happening is that we have a lot of snobs among the leaders of American Jewry who figure they can use and manipulate rednecks like Hagee. And maybe so. Still, it seems to me that in a country where we’re a tiny minority group, it makes a lot more sense for American Jews to build alliances with non-Jews who aren’t aiming at our short-term destruction.

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